Leaving Thailand

(By Susan)

We leave Bangkok and Thailand today for Phnom Penh and Cambodia.  Again, I’m starting to feel just a little apprehensive.  We’ve kind of got a little of the geography worked out here, and are loving the food and the way these guys go about things.  We have access to wi-fi at each end of the day when we get back to the hotel, and that works quite nicely – and Dermot still gets to read his daily electronic copy of The Age.  Though leaving any city is rarely a sad thing for us.

 

The bustle of Chinatown

The view from out dinner table on our last night in Bangkok

There’s less incense in the air than in Vietnam, and the streets are much, much cleaner.  We have seen the crass ‘farang’ or tourist side of Khaosan Road and the market around it – although it’s fun, it does seem to be full of people who’d rather be amongst their own and experiencing the safety of balmy night markets where you can still eat a parmigiana washed down with Heineken.  But at least they’re travelling, I suppose. We’ve wandered through the narrow alleyways of Soi Baht and the Monk’s Bowl Market, where we did indeed buy a monk’s bowl.  Very beautiful, and crafted carefully to carry alms for the Buddhist monks around the city.  The Muay Thai fights (it’s not kickboxing) were fascinating in lots of ways, and Rory went off with Paula this morning to a boxing gym for a two-hour training session – he might be glad of the hurry-up-and-wait process of international transit! 

On the mat with the pads

In the ring with the pads

With the whole group - most of them 'newbies'.
Paula and the other instructor are at the front.
[And thank you to Paula for the pics]

We’ve also been pulled and pushed through the process that is a Thai massage, and travelled in hair-raising style with all three of us squished into a tuk-tuk.  And the Buddhas.  There are a lot of Buddhas: lying down ones, standing up ones, sitting ones, laughing ones, wise ones, gold ones, stone ones, thin ones, fat ones…..

 

At the Marble Temple - this was one of the
more beautiful temples - or 'Wats'

The toes of the Buddha - the big one

Standing below the 45m gold-leaf chap,
you could see right up his nose.

The feeling around the protests, we won’t miss that much.  The protests around the election affected our trip to the airport this afternoon.  Just after we left our street, we spent half an hour travelling about 200m.  It wasn’t fun.  There wasn’t another flight this afternoon, so a quiet anxiety had begun to settle on the cabin of the taxi.  And the driver wasn’t impressed either. Then the fit-looking guy with the dark skin, heavy middle-eastern accent, the black and white houndstooth-patterned scarf (not unlike the one you often see in the footage about Palestinian flare-ups), and the camouflage fatigues asked us to carry some of his drill-bits in our checked-through luggage as we were lining up at check-in. Uncomfortable. Very. We didn’t, by the way. So.  We’ve done that.  On to the next one…..

Some of the motifs on the wall of the
Happy Buddha's temple.
This one was a little discomforting...

Us.  Happy & round little buddhas!

Another motif, this one depicting a demon
(live a good life if you don't want to end up
with this guy in the next one)